We delivered an AI Interconnection Manager for a nineteen-person Ravenel solar installer whose finished systems sat dark a median of 47 days -- one that books each final inspection in the right county portal the hour the crew's photos land, files every utility completion packet the day the inspection passes, and chases each homeowner's signature until the roof is switched on

He wired his first solar array in 2011, on the roof of his own house off Savannah Highway in Ravenel, after nineteen years as a Navy electrician. The panels went up in two days. The utility let him turn them on four months later. He promised himself no customer of his would ever wait like that.

Fifteen years on, the company has nineteen people -- four install crews, two electricians, a designer, two salespeople, a permit coordinator and an office manager -- and puts about 310 systems a year on roofs from Johns Island to Summerville to Walterboro. The installs were never the problem. The problem started the moment the truck left the driveway. Between the last panel and the day a homeowner may legally flip the switch sits a chain nobody sees: a final electrical inspection booked in whichever of fourteen county and town portals governs that address, an as-built packet for the utility, a net-metering agreement the homeowner has to sign, a meter exchange, and finally the utility's permission to operate.

Every link waited on the one before it, and all of them lived in the permit coordinator's head and on a whiteboard. Last August, 61 finished systems sat dark at once. The median roof waited 47 days. The loan payments started at 30.

Every one-star review the company had ever received was about the wait. The lab built an AI Interconnection Manager. It runs on the office laptop under the company's own AI account, and it wakes when the crew lead's end-of-job photos land in the job folder -- the forty pictures the crews were already taking for warranty. It checks them against the plan set: panel count, inverter serial plates, every required placard.

If the rapid-shutdown label is missing from the photos, it texts the crew lead while the truck is still in the driveway. Then it logs into that jurisdiction's portal, requests the earliest final inspection, and sends the homeowner the window. From there it watches every portal on the hour. When an inspection passes, it assembles the completion packet -- certificate, as-built single-line diagram, photos of the disconnect and meter base -- and files it with Dominion Energy or Berkeley Electric Cooperative the same hour.

It sends the homeowner the net-metering agreement and chases the signature until it comes back. When an inspection fails, it reads the inspector's correction note, books an electrician on the nearest open half-day, and rebooks the reinspection. It pays reinspection fees under $150 itself. When permission to operate arrives, it sends the homeowner the crew lead's forty-second switch-on video and moves the job onto monitoring.

The line is the plan set and the homeowner's name. It never signs anything for a customer, and if an inspector wants a design change -- a disconnect moved, a breaker resized -- it holds that job for the designer and says so in one line. The Friday before Labor Day, the owner was on the water off Edisto and the permit coordinator was off until Tuesday. Dominion issued permission to operate on eleven systems that evening; by seven o'clock all eleven households had the switch-on video, and nine were producing power before dark.

On Saturday a Dorchester County inspection failed for a missing placard; the electrician was booked for Tuesday at eight and the reinspection for Wednesday. Six net-metering agreements that had sat unsigned for a week came back over the weekend. Tuesday's note read: eleven systems on, one correction booked, one thing for you -- the inspector on Bees Ferry Road wants the disconnect moved, which changes the plan set. That is what the note looks like every morning at six-thirty: what moved, and the one thing that needs him.

Most mornings there is nothing. This August, 14 systems were waiting instead of 61. The median roof now waits 13 days. The permit coordinator spends her week on the front end, filing permits the day a contract is signed, and installs start eleven days sooner because of it.

Nobody has called to ask when they can turn it on since June. "I waited four months for my own roof," he said. "For fifteen years my customers waited almost as long, and I chased every one of them myself. This summer most of them waited less than two weeks, and I didn't chase anybody."